The present invention is directed to a system and method for notifying and dispatching employees. The notification system and method of the present invention may also be used as an accessory or addition to existing dispatch systems.
Existing employee dispatch systems and methods include either a dispatcher (a person who receives and processes requests for services), or an automated dispatch system. These existing dispatch systems suffer from shortcomings and limitations that significantly detract from their usefulness and their efficient management of resources.
The limitations of current dispatch systems can be demonstrated by considering an example of a large public utility, such as a local telephone company that provides telephone services. Local telephone companies typically have tens of millions of customers, and those customers request new services or changes in services. These requests require the telephone company to dispatch technicians to service locations to make the requested changes in service.
On average, a local telephone company will make two and a half to three million service order dispatches per year. Generally, the productivity per task is about 2 hours, in other words, the requests for service generally take 2 hours to resolve. With this level of productivity, the local telephone company can only assign around four items per day per technician. Thus each truck dispatch is extremely costly to the local telephone company. It therefore becomes imperative that each dispatch is effective, i.e., each dispatch either actually resolves the problem or obtains information needed to resolve the problem.
Conventional automated dispatch systems very often assign tasks on a first-come, first-serve basis to the first available technician. As a technician completes or close out a job, the next job in the queue is automatically assigned to that technician. Occasionally, by happenstance, this first-come first-serve priority system would produce efficiencies where a second job would come to the technician after the first job was completed and the second job would happen to be in the same location as the first job. This would allow the technician to quickly complete a second job without having to drive to another location. Unfortunately, these efficiencies seldom occur and then only by pure chance. Oftentimes, in fact, that was not the case, and it would be very likely that a technician would leave the first location to travel to the next job site and a second technician would drive up to that first location to complete a second job there.
Moreover, in some cases a single problem causes multiple customers to lose service or experience poor service. For example, damage to pedestals that provide telephone service to multiple customers could cause several customers to report problems or loss of service. The pedestal often is located on the side of the road and provides a connection between a customer""s location and serving centers. These pedestals are subject to damage, for example, from cars or even from state highway mowers. When damage to these pedestals occurs, the result is often that multiple outages occur in one locality. Generally, conventional reporting and dispatch systems address this problem by setting a certain tolerance threshold to indicate a probable common problem. For example, if the threshold were set at five, the system would require five or more similar complaints or reports of problems received from a common location to assume that a common problem was causing all of the problems reported by customers. If that threshold number of complaints or reports were met, then only a single technician would be dispatched to resolve the problem.
However, in those cases where the threshold for a system wide or regional problem is not met, as many (in the example provided above) as four technicians may be deployed to a single site causing enormous waste of resources and extreme expense to the company.
Also, customers often cancel appointments or request a modification in service. Sometimes these changes can occur at the last minute and existing systems have no way of informing the technician of these changes. These cancellations and modifications also waste technician resources, because technicians waste time waiting for customers or are required to return to the same location to make the modifications in service that the customer later requested.
Another source of ineffective use of technician resources is the lack of knowledge of customer service representatives. These representatives often lack an understanding of the costs associated with technician deployment and of the logistical complexities of managing and assigning a large number of technicians. They are generally trained to meet the customer""s needs and to generate service orders. However, customer service representatives may occasionally create two different service orders for related or similar tasks. This could cause two dispatches to be generated and result in two technicians being deployed to the same location to fix what the service representative thinks are two different problems, but is instead only a single problem that could be handled by a single technician.
Dispatch systems that use a human dispatcher may permit real time modification of tasks and assignments. However, these dispatch systems, generally employed by taxicab companies, suffer significant drawbacks that would prevent them from being employed in large-scale environments. These dispatcher-based dispatch systems rely on a human dispatcher who is given information regarding demand (customers that need rides). The dispatcher uses this information combined with his or her knowledge of where all of the cabs are to assign the customer pick up to the nearest available cab. First, these dispatch systems are very expensive because a staff of well trained dispatchers are required to work around the clock, 24 hours a day, to match resources with demand. Second, the dispatcher-based systems are not practical for large-scale deployment because human dispatchers cannot accurately track hundreds, much less thousands, of technicians and their daily assignments. Finally, human dispatcher-based systems rely heavily dependent on the performance of the dispatcher or the dispatcher staff. Human error may produce an unacceptable level of errors.
Thus there is currently a need for a system that accommodates real time or near real time changes in load or demand by adjusting or reallocating resources to meet those changing needs. There is also need for such a system that is also automated, can handle a large number of technicians and requests for services, and inexpensively delivers information to the technician.
The present invention is designed to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art and to provide an effective and efficient dispatching system that can adjust resources to meet and accommodate real time changes in demand or load. The invention provides a system that notifies technicians of real time changes in their scheduled work. The system can determine if a real time intervention in a technician""s schedule is necessary and can notify the technician in near real time of changes in assigned tasks. In this way, the invention adjusts the allocation of resources to meet real time changes in demand.
Once a technician has been dispatched to complete a task, the system monitors cancellations and changes that may be requested by the customer for that task. The system sends information to adjust the assignment of the technician to efficiently utilize the technician""s time in situations where the customer has requested late or last minute cancellations or changes.
The system allows real time or near real time instructions to be sent to the technician. These instructions can include changes or modifications to the task assigned to the technician. The instructions can also include notices that the task has been canceled, or that the technician should complete the assigned task and then remain at that location to receive the next assignment.
The invention may include a system that considers the following information in determining if a real time intervention is necessary: information regarding the work history of the technician or the number of hours the technician has worked in a pay period, including the number of overtime hours, the availability of the technician, the qualifications of the technician, and the suitable locations where the technician is most beneficially dispatched.
An object of the present invention is to reduce or eliminate the inefficient use of technicians.
Another object the present invention is to maximize the utilization of technicians.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system that adjusts and reallocates resources to meet real time changes in load or demand.
Another object of the present invention is to provide real time or near real time information to a technician regarding the status of his assignments.